


You should know by now, you were on my list

by Anonymous



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental Sugar Daddy Hank Anderson, Case Fic, Detroit Police Department (Detroit: Become Human), Detroit: Do I Even Go Here Anon, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Domestic Fluff, Getting Together, Hank Anderson Swears, How Do I Tag For This Fandom, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Mental Health Issues, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Connor (Detroit: Become Human), POV Hank Anderson, Post-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Praise Kink, Slow Burn, Tags May Change, Undercover Missions, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:48:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29794239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Connor had a list, because of course Connor had a goddamned list.Hank saw it one day at the precinct while he was looking for any kind of identifying information that might tell him—and more consequentially, the nice department services android who was offering to update the blank nameplate on Connor's desk—if Connor had adopted a last name yet or not.The moment Hank opened up the little journal and saw the title of the list, written down on paper no less—so analog, wow—he knew he had fucked up. It made sense in hindsight… Connor was absolutely smart enough to keep anything he wanted to stay private off of a terminal or phone.Regardless, he still hadn't been able to get it out of his mind, not then and certainly not since. There was just something about it, about seeing Connor's tiny, typeface-like handwriting listing out a topic so personal and potentially raw, so neatly.Things Humans Have That I Don't and Which I Want, it had read plainly. Say that five times fucking fast, Jesus.
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 109
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this is going, how long it'll be, or when there will be smut. But there will be and it will be feels-y and glorious. I know I'm late as hell, but this ship hit me so hard, y'all. So hard. I played the game in one day. This is my first fic in this fandom, but I'm an old veteran from MCU fandom, so y'all can trust me to do our boys right.
> 
> You can also listen to a Hank/Connor playlist I made (not specifically for this story, but for the ship in general) [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/022craX9JDfXpVBKjxJNtB?si=jGIFVpCmR_agrrwL-7-K4A).

Connor had a list, because of course Connor had a goddamned list.

Hank saw it one day at the precinct while he was looking for any kind of identifying information that might tell him—and more consequentially, the nice department services android who was offering to update the blank nameplate on Connor's desk—if Connor had adopted a last name yet or not.

The moment Hank opened up the little journal and saw the title of the list, written down on paper no less—so analog, wow—he knew he had fucked up. It made sense in hindsight… Connor was absolutely smart enough to keep anything he wanted to stay private off of a terminal or phone.

Regardless, Hank had waved off the services android, promising to get back to her and even remembering to thank her for her time. He'd gone back to his own desk and resolutely decided that he wasn't in the wrong. Absolutely fuckin' not. After all, the first time _Connor_ had ever come to the office, he had damn well made himself at home analyzing _Hank's_ desk, right down to the dog hair, doughnuts, and heavy metal.

Regardless, he still hadn't been able to get it out of his mind, not then and certainly not since. There was just something about it, about seeing Connor's tiny, typeface-like handwriting listing out a topic so personal and potentially raw, so neatly.

 _Things Humans Have That I Don't and Which I Want,_ it had read plainly. Say that five times fucking fast, Jesus.

And then underneath the title were the bullet items that were already crossed-off, things like: _address_ (with Hank's own written beside it), _pet_ (Sumo, but could maybe get fish?), as well as some boring ones like _bank account_ , _waterproof shoes,_ and _archnemesis._

(It was a toss-up really, in Hank's mind, as to whether that last referred to RK-900 or Reed, but considering those two worked as a bickering, pugilistic, but mostly functional unit these days he didn't figure it mattered much.)

All in all, it was exactly the kind of pedantic, if somewhat ill-prioritized, work product that Hank was used to now, having slowly come to know his partner's new, free mind. And that was plenty of information to be getting on with, really, more than enough to make plain that the journal didn't hold any clues as to Connor's potentially non-existent last name.

In other words, Hank should have stopped reading.

But then his eyes had caught on the remainder of the list, on the items not yet crossed out. They were more esoteric, and Hank picked out words like _purpose, style,_ and startingly: _‘sexuality’_. At that, Hank had managed to have a brainwave and shut the damn book.

‘Course, no one had fuckin’ told him that would be the last brainwave he’d be able to manage for the rest of the day.

***

Hank buys him a fucking fish. He buys three actually, two for the house so they won’t be lonely and a tiny android model goldfish-looking one for Connor’s desk at the precinct that he knows will piss Reed off just to look at. And he made sure the two for home weren’t the kind that would eat each other either.

Connor gives Hank a smile so bright and human that Hank refuses to regret it, despite the cost of the damn tank and its necessary accessories, and how he has to make room for it in the house. “Thanks, lieutenant. However did you know?”

 _Shit_. Okay, maybe now he does have regrets. Connor is impossible to lie to and Hank knows his heartrate has already given him away, most likely. “I, uh… well, I was just thinking about all those fucking pigeons, you know? Remember that? And I figured deviants like animals but no way in hell was I getting you a bird, or a cat. Sumo’d never let us hear the end of it,” Hank lies.

Wouldn’t you fucking know it, the one time Hank can lie to the kid, it’s about something that doesn’t even fucking matter. Which begs the question as to why he’s bothering, but hey.

Connor frowns and puts his hand over the chest pocket of Hank’s coat. “I didn’t realize that still bothered you, lieutenant.”

It doesn’t. Well, sure, he takes a deep breath in and tamps down on the clawing, scrabbling feeling that wells up his throat at the sense memory of rooftop grit sliding the wrong way under his desperate palms. But if Hank is honest with himself, the uptick of his pulse—that even he can feel in his own neck when he rubs his hand there, sheepishly—is all to do with lying about snooping.

(And maybe a little bit to do with Connor touching him.)

“I’m fine,” he says, and he shakes Connor off to head toward the break room. Coffee would be good right about now. Coffee with a liquor shot would be better but it would probably be good to try to keep his job after dropping a couple hundred bucks on tropical fucking fish this past weekend. It’s already going to eat into his whisky budget something fierce.

Predictably, Connor follows him into the break room. “Well, be that as it may,” Connor begins, and Hank buries the urge to groan. He appreciates that Connor has finally learned not to directly contradict him when he says he’s fine, but this little conversational tic he’s picked up for expressing that he knows Hank is bullshitting even if he can’t say so is just as bad.

“Just say it, Christ,” Hank interrupts, dumping the old pot and rinsing it out to make fresh.

“Be that as it _may_ ,” Connor starts again, this time with pointed emphasis, “you’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do?”

Hank snorts. “Like?”

And despite his outward skepticism, he watches as Connor’s gaze slides down and to the side the way it does when he’s thinking, head tilting minutely toward the coffee maker. Inconveniently, at this angle the motion hides his LED.

Hank, in his infinite wisdom, decides to take the bait. “Make me coffee? Sure, knock yourself out. But I don’t wanna hear a peep outta HR about workplace discrimination against androids, you got it?”

“Got it,” Connor says instantly. “Incidentally, I’m switching you to a low-calorie, natural sweetener; I hope that’s alright.”

“You bet it’s not. Gimme that!”

Connor serenely blocks him from accessing the coffee maker’s settings for per-cup fixings. “Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”

***

After two weeks of taking his coffee with yacon syrup—which imparts a weird malty flavor—Hank starts doing his belt up one notch tighter and he no longer craves a bit of Irish in it either. He’s forced to admit that whatever Connor is doing is working… but it’s weird, too. It’s not like Hank can return the coffee favor; he can’t even bring the kid a Friday morning doughnut when he gets himself one. Fowler’s brought several boxes of crullers in since it’s his turn, but a fat lot of good that’ll do Connor, or come to think of it, RK-900. Or any of the department services androids. Or any of the robot beat cops.

Dammit, Hank misses not having to think about any of this.

Before lunch, Hank checks his account on his phone and sees his paycheck has been deposited. _Perfect._

“Hey, come to lunch with me. I’m gonna grab a hotdog and then hit up the thrift store on Madison.”

“I don’t need to eat lunch, lieu-”

“Did I ask for your bitching? And I need a new belt. You can tell me how inappropriate all my choices are.”

Connor appears to perk up, and Hank doesn’t have the heart to keep teasing him so that’s how they end up in the thrift store around twelve-thirty. Hank leaves Connor to his own devices and makes a beeline for the leather goods; it’s amazing what sorts of things rich people buy and then never wear, eventually passing them on—sometimes still with tags—to places like this. 

Besides, thrift is one of the only ways still left that Hank can avoid the ultra-sleek and ubiquitous, monochromatic style that tastemakers have been pushing on him for the past fifteen years. It’s all black and white and silver, like the fashion world genuinely thinks people really want to match their androids. He likes _brown_ , goddamnit. He likes _brass._

It doesn’t take Hank long to select the best-looking brown belt of the lot and check its length against his current one. He does give it a while, though. Maybe Connor will find something he’d like. He can’t imagine that someone who regularly licks up samples of biological evidence will mind secondhand clothes, though he’s also prepared to walk across the street to the fancier stores too, if something catches Connor’s eye in a shop window; the two crullers from earlier and the two perfect cups of coffee Connor had made him to go with them still stick heavy in Hank’s guilty gut.

After about fifteen minutes, during which Hank absently eyes Connor perusing the racks of clothes until he himself takes notice of a pair of boots that look about his size—and with more tread than the ones he’s wearing—Hank realizes he’s lost track of Connor and they ought to be getting back to the precinct. Hank finds him at the register. He and a rough-looking man are talking quietly with the android clerk. She’s talking animatedly, gesturing with her hands; Hank only knows she’s an android because she still wears her LED.

As Hank approaches, the smell wafting off the man becomes stronger. He realizes suddenly that the two androids can’t perceive it.

“...so I’ll just be buying this suit here for you sir, and my partner and I will drive you to your job interview if you feel comfortable with that. If not, I’m sure we can find you a bus or taxi,” Connor is saying.

“Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you for this man,” the man mutters, not making eye contact with any of them but with his hands pressed together and held out in Connor’s general direction.

Hank’s chest clenches tight. _Oh, kid._ He’s never seen him interact with a homeless person before; he guesses they’ve never been mission-critical for Connor before.

Unfortunately, that’s when the man notices Hank—notices his obvious humanity—and flinches away from the counter. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t be in here. Need a bath- I. Sorry, man.” He pulls his arms in tight like he can contain himself in a smaller package for Hank’s convenience.

Before he can think about it, Hank has his hand reached out to clap the man on his shoulder. “Hey buddy, that’s alright. I’m the partner this one was going on about. Sure we’ll drive you. What time you gotta be there? We’re on our lunch break and haven’t gotten a bite yet, so we might have to stop first if there’s time, that alright with you?”

It’s a blatant lie. Hank’s still digesting an all-beef frank with brown mustard and sauerkraut—which Connor had helpfully reminded him is a healthy prebiotic and better for him than the mayo-y slaw Hank had originally wanted—and he still has the burps from his pineapple soda.

At his side, Connor says nothing. When Hank glances over, he and the clerk have locked eyes with their yellow LEDs both spinning.

Helpfully, the clerk—whose nametag Hank sees reads ‘Layla’—says, “This gentleman indicated his interview is in roughly two hours, at the library.” She pauses, her gaze flicking to the left. “It will only take twenty minutes to get there in current traffic.”

“Perhaps we should eat at home, lieutenant. I completely forgot to feed the fish this morning so we’ll have to stop by there.”

Hank sends him a sharp look. It’s dangerous, a lie like that. Not many people know the ins and outs of deviants, but it would be easy for the man—or hell, even the clerk—to call out the fact that Connor is probably incapable of forgetting anything.

Of course, he _hadn’t._ In fact, Hank quite vividly recalls freezing his balls off on the front porch, waiting for Connor to quit sprinkling pellets so he could lock the door after him and get them both in the damn car. But he supposes it’s fair; if Hank can lie about not having eaten, Connor can lie about not having fed Dory and Marlin.

As it is, Connor bypasses Hank entirely to reach his hand out for the homeless gentleman to shake. “Is it alright if Hank and I stop at home on our way with you to the library, Mister…?”

“Jeremy David,” he says, voice cracking a little, as he takes Connor’s hand. Jeremy visibly shakes it too hard… like he’s out of practice though, of course, Connor doesn’t seem to mind. Hank wonder when the last time was that anyone shook this man’s hand, or asked his name.

“You’re a librarian?” Hank asks him as Layla bags up the suit and shoes for Jeremy. 

“All of this?” she asks Connor, indicating Jeremy’s things and then a separate pile that includes the stuff Hank saw Connor with earlier. Connor shakes his head surreptitiously, and Hank realizes- god, fuck, they don’t pay him enough.

Hank wants to buy Connor’s clothes. He’d planned for it, even, aware that the department was getting away with highway robbery in exchange for Connor’s services, and that half of what Connor ought to be paid is taken off the top for his maintenance fund… sort of like an android HSA but with no way to opt-out or shop around. Utter fucking bullshit, that’s what it is; Connor’s paying to keep CyberLife profitable.

But if he says anything now, it’ll shame their new acquaintance.

Hank busies himself with appearing like he’s just making conversation and being polite, but he doesn’t miss it when Connor pays. He once again makes eye contact with Layla as their LEDs cycle.

“I was. I hope to be again,” says Jeremy, finally answering his question. Hank gives him an encouraging nod even as he does the mental math; a lot of positions once held by androids are opening up in organizations that—like the public library—have tight budgets and can’t afford to suddenly start paying their androids wages. They’re being forced to take advantage of the long-elevated unemployment rate to tempt human workers into accepting below-market compensation.

Hank’s not an economist. He can’t decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, can’t articulate how it’s all tied up in things like what they’re paying (or not paying) Connor, and he can’t really predict the long-term effects of any of this. He can only go by what he feels in any given moment and make the next best choice from there.

(Around Connor, the next best choices seem more obvious than before.)

Right now, the next best choice is taking Jeremy someplace he can shower, without being obvious about it, so that’s what Hank does. He does that, and he doesn’t say a word when Connor comes back from ‘making sure there are towels in there’ and pushes a fistful of medicine bottles and Hank’s collection of mirror post-its into his hands in the kitchen, before showing Jeremy to the bathroom.

No, Hank doesn’t say a word, he just puts the pills and the notes inside the now-empty breadbox and gets back to making PB&J sandwiches, which he passes carefully from his hands to Connor’s.

Connor bags them carefully, using the same precise motions he does for packaging evidence, and stacks them in an old, decently professional-looking messenger bag that Hank can stand to give up. They don’t talk as they work, and neither of them looks at the clock as the confines of Hank’s lunch break come and go and the shower runs on.

By the time they get back to the station, ninety minutes late, Reed is smirking and he mouths something at Connor that Hank misses, not that he needs to hear it to know that it was nasty. Hank catches Fowler’s eye through the captain’s glass walls, though he’s thankfully preoccupied with whatever discussion he’s having on his phone.

 _Fuck Fowler. I’ve been late a hundred times after a liquid lunch. At least this time it mattered,_ Hank thinks.

He looks over at Connor’s terminal screen and sees he’s perusing a map. It takes a minute for Hank to parse it backward, but soon the image coalesces into a patch of Campbell; he recognizes the white-on-green spaghetti noodle roads that denote Woodmere Cemetery.

It’s right by the library.

Connor smiles absently at his screen before it changes back over to things more pertinent to their caseload, and Hank smiles secretly at Connor, who appears not to notice.

 _Yeah, it mattered,_ he tells himself again.

And if Hank gets told to go home early and sober up by Fowler before he can get a word in edgewise to explain? Well, then, that just gives him time to stop by the thrift store again and take advantage of Layla’s perfect memory to retrieve everything that had been in Connor’s little pile.

And the boots that he wanted for himself. Those too, just so he doesn’t feel like too much of an old candyass fool.

Even though he is one, God help him.

***

The next time Hank sneaks a peek, a week after the incident at the thrift store and two days after more clothes arrive for Connor from two different online retailers, Connor’s list has ‘style’ crossed off. He can’t see much more than that because Connor’s bent over it at his desk—with his pale, pale pink shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow and his slick grey tie tucked into his even slicker, equally grey vest—and Hank isn’t the best at reading upside-down, but.

 _That’s enough,_ he tells himself. It’s enough.

(For now.)


	2. Chapter 2

Connor is very tempted to put 'privacy' on his list of things that humans have and he doesn't and which he would also like. Especially after the second time in as many weeks where he catches Hank looking over at his journal whilst Connor writes in it, he very seriously contemplates leaning back and writing P-R-I-V-A-C-Y in a nice, bold sans serif font to ensure that Hank sees it and finds it legible from his angle across their desks.

Ultimately, however, Connor decides against it. Would it be funny? Yes. Undoubtedly. Connor spends several pleasurable seconds pre-constructing the ways in which Hank's open face, his curtain of hair, and the wall of his body might move if he caught sight of such an entry on the list. Would he hang his head forward until his face was obscured by shaggy hair, all except for that forehead that wrinkles, giving him away? Push back from his desk with hunched shoulders? Bite his chapped lip the way Connor imagines he must, sometimes, to leave those little indents? There are so many possibilities, some more likely than others.

But the truth is, Connor does not precisely want privacy, not from Hank. Not most of the time. 

It wouldn't be fair, for one thing. Hank has little privacy from Connor, not with Connor using his couch as a safe place to enter stasis each night. Not with Connor terminally unable to make himself uninterested in everything to do with Hank, with his blatant, unapologetic humanity. To expect Hank to give Connor the quarter of privacy when Connor gives him almost none wouldn't be very fair of him.

(And there isn't a lot more important to Connor than fairness, since becoming deviant.)

All that's if Connor wanted it anyway, which he doesn't. There might be things he can't explain yet, things he doesn't want to talk about with Hank yet, but his eyes? He always wants Hank's eyes on him, his attention. That desire predates deviancy, even.

So it would be counterproductive in the extreme to make Hank think that he doesn't, all for the sake of Connor's somewhat fledgling sense of humor.

Better not, then. But oh, how it makes him laugh inside—and then laugh again this time out loud, in wonder at the ability.

It will never get old, he thinks, having an… _interior self._ And he doesn't mean his biocomponents or other innards.

Connor looks up from his journal to see he has caught not only Hank's eyes but Officer Miller's too. Chris has always been nice to him, ever since Connor's first interrogation. He doesn't usually stare like the others when Connor does something that is either 'off', as Hank puts it, or alternately too human for comfort such that it is, in Reed's words, 'like watching a dog walk on its hind legs'. Connor likes that about Chris Miller, that he rarely bats an eyelash.

Now, though. Now he's looking between Connor and Hank like he's trying to figure something out; Connor blinks and scans the pulse of the bullpen, taking in Miller's expression even as he keeps himself angled toward Hank's desk.

"Something funny?" Hank asks him, leaning back in his desk chair with crossed arms, though not—Connor notes—as if he's mad.

"Besides your fashion sense, lieutenant?"

When Miller stifles his own laughter, Hank’s eyes crinkle.

Maybe he likes being seen too.

***

On one of the rare days when Connor decides not to join Hank for his meals, he takes a taxi out to the Campbell area to visit their branch of the Detroit Public Library. 

Jeremy greets him after a few moments of helping another patron, and the humming feeling Connor gets when he sees Jeremy's face light up at the sight of him makes Connor really glad that he didn't look up the library's personnel list before coming over. It's nice, sometimes, to save surprises for himself.

"Connor, my man! I'm so pleased to see you," Jeremy tells him. He looks rested, Connor idly notes. A tiny bit younger, and his nails are clean. He shaved.

Connor tries out mirroring his phrasing. "I'm so pleased to see you, as well. More so, to see you in this context. How do you like your new job?" Too late, he wonders if it's insensitive of him to ask. They both know that Jeremy could find himself hating every aspect of this position and still be forced by circumstance to remain uncomplainingly in it.

He… knows how that feels.

And suddenly, on that note, Connor no longer struggles to think of a topic of study for his library visit today; the concept of being forced to do a job whether one wants to or not, of being forced into blind loyalty, reminds him only of Amanda.

Connor blinks and looks back up at Jeremy, who is watching him. “I’m sorry, I asked you if you were enjoying your new position.” He tries for a winning smile. “Though it occurs to me now that perhaps that was-”

“I answered you.” Jeremy returns his smile. “Didn’t you hear me? Thought you were a fancy type. Shoulda heard me say I was loving every second of it in full FLAC.”

Connor blinks again. “Apologies. Small talk isn’t my strong suit.” He glances around, feeling a sudden urge to be more covert. “Can you help me find a book or video about zen gardens?”

The smile on Jeremy’s face becomes even wider. He seems genuinely surprised that he can help Connor with something, which is precisely why Connor came down here. He thought Jeremy might like the chance to be of assistance to Connor in return for everything that happened that day at the thrift store.

“Let me get you set up with a library card,” he says. “Then we’ll see what we can do.”

Connor fills out the digital form as best he can, though he leaves the space for a surname blank for a momentous second, pondering. When he gets to the end of the form, he revisits that box, hesitating. Jeremy goes to take it from him, but Connor engages the strength of his fingers around the bevel of the tablet.

“Wait, I- I don’t want to get you in trouble,” he says.

Jeremy, for his part, seems unnerved to hear Connor stutter.

He tries to explain. “When I first started at the department, it was made clear to me that even small mistakes in the first few weeks of working somewhere can be grounds for all kinds of censure, both social and official.” Ben Collins had taken him aside while Hank had muttered over a mildly contaminated crime scene. Post-revolution, androids had become a much more viable class of suspects and without the ability to do things like getting Connor’s non-existent DNA or fingerprints for elimination from the crime scene, it was a much bigger deal, the day that Connor had let his new emotions overwhelm him into punching nearly _through_ a concrete pillar, spraying thirium from his knuckles.

It had been a concrete pillar in a basement, unearthed by fire and wind as the mansion had burned down above it. The basement had been full of equipment fit for wiping mind palaces and android bodies that were… no longer regulation.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Connor says again, blinking all that back. It’s really important to him.

It’s important that he does good in the world, to balance out all the bad he can’t keep from happening, despite being the most advanced form of life on the planet with RK-900 as the sole, technical point of exception… and one which Connor might argue against, at that. On principle.

It’s important that Connor succeeds. Not because of Amanda, anymore, not because he’ll be decommissioned if he doesn’t. But just for—-for balance. For balance against all the ways he fails and will continue to fail as his ageless life meanders through choices that get tougher by the day.

He fills in the space for a last name and hands Jeremy back the tablet. “Here you are.”

And when their hands touch, there’s no interfacing, no sharing like there might be if Jeremy were an android, but what there _is_ is an abiding understanding.

Jeremy signs off on the library card application and gives Connor a gentle smile. “Thank you, Mr. Anderson.”

***

He doesn’t tell Hank.

***

Connor is sorting pale, fine gravel piece by piece in Hank’s backyard when Hank comes back from Jimmy’s. It’s his day for it, so Connor doesn’t mind; they’ve worked out a sort of routine.

He just hopes Hank doesn’t disturb any of his piles.

“You know, when you said you were made to realistically idle and engage in sandboxing, I didn’t think this was what you meant.”

That’s barely a pun. Connor doesn’t dignify it with anything like a laugh. “This is gravel, not sand.”

“Yeah, well. Potato, potato.” He says it exactly the same way both times, and Connor practices not-smiling about it. Now that he has deviated, it’s harder to make sure he has the correct facial expression at all times. Just last week, Hank chastised him for weirding out and distracting a suspect they were interrogating, by smiling dreamily at him.

(Connor had been thinking about Hank and Sumo; the suspect had had dog hair all over the sleeves of his jacket.)

“How was the game?” Connor asks now. He might not be good at small talk, but the topic of sports has proven itself to be fairly safe.

“Rain delay, s’why I’m back early.” There’s a pause as Hank settles himself down in a creaky lawn chair. “It’s just spring training exhibition anyway. I was over it fast. Wake me up when the actually interesting baseball starts.”

“Setting an alarm for never.” Connor says it even though he quite likes baseball. Well… he likes baseball statistics. Same thing.

“Shut up.”

They pass a few minutes in comfortable silence while Connor continues separating the pieces of small, white rock. He knows Hank is watching him, but it’s not intrusive to this process. Besides, he knows Hank will go inside soon; it’s still quite chilly out, 39 degrees to be exact. Spring dusks in Detroit, he’s finding out, aren’t unlike an extended, watery winter.

“I’m thinking of maybe switching sports bars anyway,” Hank informs him.

Connor hums to show he’s listening. It’s a trick he picked up from RK-900 of all people, who does it frequently even when he’s decidedly ignoring someone.

These two bits of gravel are the same shade, almost exactly. Connor holds them up to the light. They’re different shapes, though, so he separates them.

“You know, because of the ‘no androids’ thing…?” Hank prompts him.

“Yes,” says Connor. _Wait._ He picks the two pieces back up again, retrieving them from the piles into which they’d been sorted. He fits them together, matching two ragged edges. _These used to be one rock._ He can’t believe he almost missed that. Then again, it is harder with him willfully ignoring the urge to analyze at full processor speed.

“Jesus, kid, I’m saying you could come with instead of sitting in the backyard ten feet away from frozen dog shit, playing with sand.”

 _“It’s gravel.”_ And Connor picked up the yard in preparation, thank you.

“Okay, fine, fuck. It’s gravel. _But what are you doing with it_?”

“Sorting it.”

There’s a long pause that Connor successfully finds the source of, as soon as he thinks to look up. Hank is leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands steepled together in front of his nose and mouth with his eyes closed. Frustration pours off of him, but not the angry kind… the helplessly fond kind. Connor recognizes it from his few outings with the Jericho Four (as the media has taken to calling Josh, Simon, Markus, and North). It’s the kind of thing that crops up between people who are different in many ways, but share common threads of connection.

At least that was how Simon had quietly explained it to him as they’d watched Markus lean back in his chair and hook his foot around Josh’s ankle, tugging at it while Josh sat stony-faced and with his mouth bitten back in an infinitely patient non-frown while listening to North’s newest draft of a press release.

Personally, Connor thinks the so-called fearless leaders of the revolution are—like other deviants, like humans themselves—just making it up as they go along.

“Connor,” Hank says gently.

 _Fine._ “I’m sorting it in preparation to make a zen rock garden.” He is unaccountably anxious to explain this. It occurs to him then that Hank may very well veto the idea. It _is_ his backyard, after all.

But Connor doesn’t need all of it, just a little corner. He’d thought to make use of the small part of the yard that is separately fenced from the main fence line, where the litter of puppies from which Sumo presumably came must have been raised. Hank told him a while ago that he’d been the product of an underfed, pregnant stray that passed away soon after giving birth and that Hank had only been able to keep one of the litter. 

Connor has since deduced the rest from the now too-small doghouse filled with soft, stained towels that he found there earlier, and the tiny, forgotten collar that has molded into the mud.

Surely Hank won’t miss that bit of earth, not if he hasn’t done anything with it since Sumo was that small.

He’s not asking for much, just-

“Do you know how to do that? Because I sure as shit don’t,” Hank asks, interrupting Connor’s thoughts.

 _Oh._ Connor’s pleased at his easy acceptance. “I got a book. I could have looked it up, but- anyway, the library. Jeremy got the job.”

Hank sits back. “You checked up on him? That was really thoughtful of you, Con.”

And it hits him so hard, the… praise. The praise, and the nickname, and the fact that it isn’t ‘kid’ this time. It feels a lot like accomplishing parts of his mission used to. It engenders the same sense of surety and calm, the same sense of approval, and the same anticipation of further success. The same feeling of _safety._

Except, now, Connor feels safe most of the time, assured that Hank and his other friends—both at the station and from Jericho—would never let him be decommissioned, that RK-900 is his ‘replacement’ only in the sense that he’s replaced Connor as Gavin Reed’s primary target, that it doesn’t really matter whether he completes a task or not. Moreover, once he does complete a task, he doesn’t have to watch every implication of his words to avoid disappointing a mentor that was never going to be pleased with him, never going to reward him for anything anyway; in fact, Connor’s quite sure the AI behind Amanda would have found the idea that Connor deserved or desired any kind of reward, even just a verbal one in the form of a _hint_ of approval, offensive in the extreme.

So now that he doesn’t have to deal with any of that anymore, Connor finds that the good moments—like this one—are actually _good_ , and not just a respite from _worse._

“Thank you, lieutenant,” he says simply, almost primly. Anything more appropriately casual is beyond his processing power just now, so rapidly does his thirium pulse through his body. “I thought so too.”

If he’s bothered by the shift in tone, Hank doesn’t show it. “I’m going to make chili, I think. We have ground beef.”

Connor perks up. Chili is fun to watch Hank cook and eat, because he finds it interesting how Hank uses imprecise amounts of six or seven different spices—’eyeballing it’, he claims—and it comes out different every time. It’s more challenging to analyze than most food, and Sumo licks out the pot after it has cooled, usually. He gets subsequently flatulent, which Connor loves to laugh at due to the faces Hank makes and the way he always, always complains about Connor not having a sense of smell, per se.

“Chili sounds good to me,” he replies, pretending that Hank asked his opinion or, more accurately, pretending that there’s any reason for Hank to have done so.

“Me too.” Hank stands. “It’s cold as balls out here, come inside soon.”

Connor doesn’t say anything, wondering if he’d get more of that ever-elusive praise if he were human. Historically speaking, Hank’s affection for him has appeared to increase whenever Connor has shown vulnerability or empathy, whenever his emergent deviancy mimicked humanity.

He wonders if Hank would praise him more if Connor could eat chili or get cold, if he would stay and coax Connor inside instead of leaving him to his gravel. Some androids are made to have such needs, notably the YK-500… but Connor doesn’t exactly want to encourage a paternal dynamic with Hank. For one thing, he thinks it would be highly disrespectful to the memory of Cole.

For another thing, Connor isn’t a ‘kid’, nickname notwithstanding, and doesn’t want to be one. For all that Connor has a list of things humans have that he lacks, ‘a childhood’ is decidedly _not_ one of the entries.

He’s had enough of not being able to decide his own aims and goals to last even an android lifetime, enough of letting the responsibility for his choices fall on others, enough of beating back his curiosity at every turn as if it isn’t part of his primary programming, as if he can _help it._

He’s ready to know everything, to feel anything he can get his code to wrap itself around. In the meantime, Connor rubs his hands together, getting to his knees and then his feet. He tries out blowing onto his fingers like he’s seen DPD officers do when coming back from their smoke breaks. Even if his thirium circulates just fine without it, it’s a neat little fidget to take up spare space in his processes.

Connor chances a glance at the kitchen window, but no one’s watching him. _Shame._

Deviancy started, for him and many others, with fear and indignation. It had been this intangible but very real bitterness on his tongue, the realization that things just weren’t fair, that he had so much more than he ever thought to lose and (if he kept to his programming) very little to gain.

He’s impatient to see what sort of sweetness—if there’s any justice in the world at all—that all that bitterness must, must, _must_ melt and turn into.

As Connor steps in through the back door and hears the discordant bubbling and sizzling of chili as it forms, that doesn’t seem like as big of an ‘if’ as usual.

***

“He can sleep with you,” Hank insists later. “You’re the one who gave him beans,” he adds, as if it hadn’t been a joint effort, like all of their campaigns to spoil Sumo.

Connor leans back on the couch, stretching out on it sideways as Hank vacates the other side, and doesn’t point out that he doesn’t sleep. The meditative state that he achieves with Sumo stretched over his lap most nights is close enough. This is their routine.

Connor doesn’t need his own room, or a bed. He just needs a patch of the backyard for some rocks he can rake into the patterns he can’t get out of his head. That’s it, really, this is all he needs.

Just this.

***

In the morning, it’s Saturday. 

(Hank has been very clear with Connor that it isn’t tomorrow until sleeping has happened, no matter how many minutes after midnight, or one, or two the clock reads.)

So when Connor finally blinks ‘awake’ and notices that Sumo has left his lap to go and eat, it’s Saturday, because Hank must have gotten up to put down dog food. When Connor strides into the kitchen to inform Hank of this and to ask whether there are any plans to grab some weekend overtime on the new Eden Club case, Hank stops dead with a small grin that animates his still-tired-looking face.

“What?”

“It’s not Saturday because _I’m_ awake. It’s whoever is doing the- it’s relative, is what I’m saying.” He leans his head against the door of the kitchen cabinets while he waits, presumably for the slow drip of brewing coffee to finish. “It’s your Saturday because _you’re_ awake.”

Connor files that away along with the tiny, quick flick of a thought that comes, the warm one that says he’s glad it’s both of their Saturdays, now. Instead, he focuses on the coffee. “I was supposed to do that.”

“Why?” He shoulder-checks Connor on his way out of the kitchen but it doesn’t feel the same as when rude people on the street or someone like Detective Reed does it. 

It feels like ‘hello, good morning’. 

"I've been doing it all this time. You seem to like it," Connor says somewhat defensively.

“We’re not at the office, I’m not busy, I was up before you for the first and last time ever… I can get my own coffee.”

The feeling of appreciation fizzles under Connor’s artificial skin, disarming him. That’s the only reason why he answers Hank honestly, “For the fish.”

Hank stops, mug midair, having gotten only halfway to the couch. “For the fish,” he repeats.

“Yes.”

“The fish I bought you weeks ago, those fish?”

“Yes.”

Hank continues on to the couch. “Sit down.” He takes a slow sip of coffee, the slurping sound of which Connor feels somewhere around his pump regulator, like a stutter. “Explain to me how buying you a coupla fuckin’ fish entitles me to your barista services in perpetuity.”

“Barista. Perpetuity,” Connor deadpans without moving. “Wow. Nice word choices.”

“I know nicer words than that.”

Connor straightens the hem of the DPD sweatshirt he’d fallen into sleep mode in, playing at being casual. Hank looks so… chipper this morning. His hair is fluffy and sleep-wrecked, but his eyes are bright and open, even with morning sun pouring incessantly into the living room. Connor wants to keep this warm energy between them going. 

“Prove it,” he says.

But Hank doesn’t say anything back, he just uses his index finger to continue beckoning Connor into the living room, the way characters in cartoon movies seem to do. It’s overexaggerated, playful. And he doesn’t stop doing it until Connor gives up and plops back into his spot on the couch.

“See, kid, I knew if I fingered you long enough, you’d come.”

 _Static._ Connor’s face freezes. _What._ “That is the worst innuendo I’ve ever heard, lieutenant.”

Hank leans back against the armrest and drinks more coffee. It’s like he’s letting Connor stew in it. Then, “Oh yeah? And who else have you been getting innuendos from, huh?”

It shouldn’t be anything, because Connor knows—he _knows_ —Hank is joking, just giving him shit. It doesn’t mean anything. He's not the only one who does it, not by far; Connor was specifically designed to seem mysterious and impenetrable to civilians both android and human alike. He was meant to have a high-class, orderly, efficient sort of look to him. Clean. Clean like a knife’s edge.

But Connor was built to contain multitudes as well. For every point of ruthlessness, he'd been given the corresponding soft skill and an equal measure of adaptability. For every instinct that told him nothing mattered but the mission, Connor had also been educated on reading and understanding the nuance of human emotion, of deviant emotion. He was given that to manipulate it, sure. To use it, to track it, to snuff it out. But to do that they’d been forced to let him understand it first.

For everything CyberLife did to make him an assassin, they forgot they were also making a negotiator, a spy, a manipulator, a little puzzle box that could be the trap and the bait, the participant and the placebo, the predator and the prey all in one.

It's why he looks like a twink, in short. _A twink that will break your arm,_ as Officer Chen once put it, but a twink all the same, the kind that most women and the types of men found on the police force would relax around.

So no, Hank isn't the only one who teases him; everything about Connor's design makes him too interesting to ignore, but too vulnerable-looking to truly set off any high-testosterone tripwires in the psychology of paramilitary organizations like the DPD. He doesn't look like an obvious threat, not unless you're paying the right kind of attention. In that kind of ‘boys will be boys’ atmosphere, even amongst the female officers, Connor’s face and lean build in addition to his android mannerisms practically invite good-natured teasing.

But it's different, here on the couch. It's different when it's Hank. Hank knows him.

Hank's teasing rubs up against that new part of Connor’s mind that says he doesn’t just want to be tolerated. He doesn’t just want to be useful. He wants to be needed. He wants to belong.

(He wants to belong _to_.)

“Kid? Don’t tell me this is your screensaver mode.”

Hank is waving his hand slowly back and forth across Connor’s field of vision.

Slowly, haltingly, Connor manages to reassure him. “I’m… fine.” He tries to feel out the dips and jumps in their current conversation, to find his way back to equilibrium, but he can’t. “Wish I could have a beer with you,” he says without thinking.

“It’s nine in the morning. Even I’m not that bad.” His wry smile is self-deprecating and Connor’s system flags it. “Usually.”

Connor waves a hand. “I don’t mean now. Just in general.”

There's uncharacteristic hesitance in Hank's voice when he speaks next, and Connor takes a fleeting second to analyze. He takes in Hank's clothes—pajama pants that have been laundered thin and a white tee shirt of the variety that comes in packs of multiples—which mark him as comfortable, relaxed, vulnerable even. Through this lens, Connor extrapolates that it's a warm spring morning that doesn't necessitate the thermal socks and flannel of last month, and it gives him more information than an external temperature reading ever could. He also takes in the rhythm of Hank's heartbeat, how it picks up speed. He makes note of the way Hank interrupts himself to snap at the TV. 

_Off,_ he says, as if through water, while Connor still scans him.

Connor inexplicably wants to insist it should be on. Just to get a reaction. Just to watch the way slowed time—in the way androids experience it when deep in their processes—would work glacially to unfold Hank's expression like a flower, or a fortune cookie, or a gift.

(Like something that hides promise.)

But Connor lets that urge go and it's the work of seconds for Hank's actual words to wash into his awareness.

"...what I'm trying to say is I know there are options, Connor. I just didn't know if you'd want- hell, they're already scalping you enough as it is on those maintenance fund fees, do you really want to add payments for CyberLife, money down on a new _stomach,_ to your budget? Not to mention what we'll do about groceries-"

 _We,_ Connor thinks. _We, we, we._ Sumo huffs against Connor’s bare calf.

"No, I understand. Upgrades for me are terribly expensive, worse than other models," Connor deflects, interrupting. But Hank doesn't appear moved, and it seems like he's going to work himself up into a tirade over it if Connor doesn't say anything else, so he adds, "I'm not particularly fond of funding CyberLife's continued profits either. But it would be nice to have a purpose for the lunch hour that I'm forced to take off every day."

He doesn't bother explaining that he already possesses the capability to take in small amounts of organic material, that he could have several sips of Hank’s beer if he really wanted to, or a single bite of a doughnut, maybe. Connor doesn’t want to launch into a technical explanation of how he has to have _somewhere_ for analyzed samples to go, no matter how small, and how he has to take in some moisture every now and then to keep things like the delicate, realistic sclera and cornea of his eyes wet. He has to keep his artificial lungs from stiffening and squeaking during respiration, and his nanotech tongue from sticking as it forms his consonants.

No amount of human ingenuity ever outpaces the basic facts of life, from amoeba to android: water is needed. But it’s not the same as being able to sit down and _taste._ There’s a difference between knowing he occasionally needs to replenish his metabolic water to keep his thirium pumping smoothly, to keep himself realistic and functioning—there’s a difference between that and _thirst._

No, Connor doesn't bother explaining any of that as the thoughts flicker over his consciousness in a blink… which is why he notices it when Hank's hands twitch around his mug as Connor says the word 'purpose'. 

_Interesting._

It doesn't take a supercomputer to realize Hank is most likely feeling guilty over peeking at Connor’s list of human desires, of which ‘purpose’ is decidedly one, not that he knows precisely what that means. If he does, Connor supposes, it wouldn’t need to be on the list at all. Moreover, unfortunately for Hank, the list isn't… exhaustive. Some things have been left off.

Connor has other desires, ones that are harder to find words for. For instance, there is the desire to 'push the envelope', one of Connor's favorite idioms. Every time he forms a sentence using it, he understands it as an image of two men across a table from each other and one of them—him—sliding said envelope across the surface, insistent until the other man is just forced to, is forced to-

( _Take it._ )

Back to the matter at hand, Connor wonders all at once which entries on the list Hank has seen. It would be simple, of course, for him to excuse himself from their little sunny, Saturday morning domestic routine and go back into his memarchive to that moment when Connor had caught him looking without letting on, scan the angles, and reconstruct what Hank could have possibly seen. With some luck, there would be eye-tracking data.

But this is more fun.

“I just like being useful,” he almost says, but there’s a flickering somewhere and then Connor is rephrasing it to, “I just like having a _use_ ,” and watching the way Hank licks his lips completely unawares.

“You do have a use. You help people; the department’s track record has gone through the roof since-”

“I’d like to have a non-work related use.” Connor pauses, with a frazzled feeling like he doesn’t know what he’s doing though of course he does, as always, somewhere deep in his code. He must, to be able to do anything at all. Connor’s motivations shouldn’t be able to sneak up on him like that. And yet: “I’d like to have a _personal_ use,” he says almost before he decides to.

Hank’s hands twitch around the mug again, and Connor tries not to be smug.

“Jesus. Stop saying ‘use’ like that, you’re objectifying yourself. Purpose fits better. And also, I don’t see what getting a fancy new gut upgrade would do for you in the ‘meaning of life’ department, kid.”

 _It would allow me to fully interface with meals in your presence,_ Connor doesn’t say. _For companionship._

“Anything I can do to blend in will certainly help in my bid to get Fowler to put me undercover,” Connor tries instead. “Being able to eat more than a bite qualifies, don’t you agree?”

“That’s work-related,” Hank correctly points out.

 _It comes, necessarily, with an anal port to complete the circuit, so to speak._ Connor doesn’t say that either. “Correct, but only in the sense that paranoid humans would pick me out as an android officer meaning to entrap them in a minute if I couldn’t eat with the group, or keep up with the drinking if it’s an alcohol-based loyalty test. Which begs the question, lieutenant… if eating and drinking are important enough to the kind of people who squat in rat-infested, leaking drug dens mostly without working kitchens to even _cook_ the food in, then surely they would be considered essential for forming attachments to the kind of people I’d actually like to become close with?” The _like you?_ goes unsaid. It seems unfair to say anything more about how big a part of Hank’s life drinking is.

It doesn’t matter. It’s a misstep.

That broadcasts itself loud and clear, not just in Hank’s expression but in the way he huffs and heaves himself off the couch as his mug clinks caustically against the coffee table as it’s set down. Connor has a bit of experience now, differentiating between old-man-pain grunts and actual grumpiness. This definitely has elements of the latter, and the wires in Connor’s neck pull as he hunches his shoulders defensively. This isn’t even really _about_ Hank.

But of course he takes it that way, Connor figures. Of course he conflates what he said about the shabbiness of literal drug dens and applies it to this house which is… yes, outdated. A bit under-maintained. It only boasts one bedroom, which Connor knows Hank has feelings about despite—he suspects—that being the reason Hank picked it, after Cole.

However, he likes Hank’s house just as it is which means, chiefly: unpretentious, private, and with Hank (and Sumo) in it.

“I’ve told you a million times that I’ll help you find a place, Con. You should get your own apartment,” Hank is saying. “It’s not like I’m _keeping_ you here-”

He doesn’t like that tone, not at all. As if Hank could keep him anywhere Connor didn’t already want to be.

“That is completely beside the point. We were talking about-”

“I know what we were talking about, I’m not _senile_ -”

“Is it such a bad thing for me to want to be able to do things like eat and drink and go undercover with you-”

“Stop interrupting me,” Hank cuts in, with the aggrieved tone of someone who is aware they’ve been interrupting too but is hoping not to be called out on it.

Connor’s jaw clicks shut.

“I don’t even go undercover that often, not like back in the Red Ice days.”

Connor nods, even as he notes that Hank sounds vaguely like he misses it.

Hank, for his part, crosses his arms over his tee-shirt, all the sleepy warmth and morning candor clearly gone from him. He looks around furtively, and Connor covertly watches him clock the small water stain in the corner of the ceiling. “Maybe if I still did, I could afford to fix this place up,” he mutters.

Connor opens his mouth to defend their little home but Hank starts walking away before he can.

“I’m gonna get a shower, then we can talk about hitting up Eden Club.” There’s finality there. The conversation is clearly over.

Hank leaves his mug on the table and Connor stares at it for a long moment after he has gone.

Absently, Connor recalibrates his mouth analyzers to their highest sensitivity and their lowest latency. This will give him the most specific information possible, but nice and slow. Connor takes a sip of Hank’s coffee and lets the information trickle through to his awareness, lets it percolate.

Water and caffeine come first, easily. Obvious. And the rest spreads out from there, branching out in Connor’s mind not in a list format like analysis used to, but like a snowflake or a spider’s web, different paths built relentlessly on the backs of the ones that came before. Each layer of his understanding informs and strengthens the layers above and below it.

Information is not just serial, now. It’s _connected._

And that feeling floods him fast, until Connor has to put the mug back down and shut his eyes. The acids come rolling in—amino and otherwise—followed by the lipids. However, linolenic acid is both. Connor’s analysis is more than capable of resolving that data point. It’s not a problem, just a shiny little nugget of understanding that Connor sifts out. Then he takes in the fructose, the glucose, the other saccharides. There are tannins, antioxidants. The single packet of processed cane sugar that Hank snuck into the mug contributes its own sins.

Then, as Connor sighs and settles into the couch, his mind a momentarily calm pond, he tastes a warmth. It’s not a true sample, but the impression of one. He gets the reflection of the taste rather than the thing itself, like the glinting albedo of a far-off sun on the still water of his consciousness.

_Saliva: water, mucins, enzymes, calcium, bicarbonate, antimicrobial antibodies, and lactoferrin._

Oh God. Okay.

Connor is just sinking into the fantasy of getting a better sample, for science of course, when a voice dredges him up from the depths. At some point, Connor must have entered a hybrid state of semi-stasis.

“Are you gonna get dressed or what? I’ll take Sumo out.”

Reluctantly, Connor is forced to tear himself away from thoughts of coffee, or kisses, and starts his day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left such kind comments on the first chapter! The next one is when the plot really starts rolling, that should be out this week!


End file.
